I see

Practicing elephant eyes.  This was painted almost directly from photo reference--a practice technique I learned from my boyfriend (he can paint!), who learned it from this other guy, the other week.

Elephants!

I've been drawing and painting and looking at a lot of them recently.  And then I found these doodles that I did last fall while reading a story called "L'éléphant" (yes, "The Elephant"), by Marcel Aymé.  In this story there is a chicken who wants to be the elephant in a game of Noah's Ark.  She pretends so hard that she actually turns into an elephant and breaks the wall, among other things.

It's a good story.

What's in a name?

A Bertrude by any other name would be just as awkward, right?

Well, weird compound names are fun.  Bertrude and Jeffica having already been established, here are a couple that occurred as I was trying to name some characters in the play-type thing I have in the works.  My guess is that I'll continue to add to this post as time wears on, because a list of goofy names is something worth having on-hand.

Jilliam
Sethew (or, Sethieu, as it was originally spelled in my head)

Autobiographical

I've been mostly writing since 9:00 this morning, so I'm very creatively talkative at the moment.  That's why I'm making a tiny post about a book title that just came to mind:

Spiritual Calculus: Learning the Lord's Timing for Maximum Growth and Blessings


The best thing is that if this winds up being the title of an autobiography-style work, people who don't know me will go into it thinking I'm a math person.  Granted, I did do well in Calculus during high school...  There are all sorts of levels at which this title and the connotations it carries are appropriate.

Now you know.


P.S. It feels really weird to me to post rough, unfinished parts of ideas that may or may not actually go anywhere.

E-pistemology

Hallo!  It's been a while, mostly because I've been desperately swamped in writing papers for the last three months.

Here's some stuff for one of them, my final paper in my Philosophy 150 class.  We're supposed to write about a topic that falls somewhere in the vast realm of epistemology, which is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge.  A philosopher exploring the field of epistemology might ask questions such as: "How do we know what we know?" "What is the origin of knowledge?" "Is it more important to know than to love?" and, "What about Naomi?"

The question I'm asking (as prompted by a "discussion" with a friend a while back) is, "Does subjective knowledge have value?"

Many people, my physics-major-friend among them, would contend that it doesn't on the basis that subjective knowledge cannot have a solid "right" and "wrong," and therefore there can be no solid foundation of basic understanding upon which to build.  No building of knowledge means no advancement, so subjective knowledge kind of doesn't go anywhere.  By the same token, it's relatively easy for anyone with any level of training to jump into a subjective field and make it look good, whereas it takes years of studying the right subjects in the right order to get anywhere in an objective field.  Thus, the compared realms of subjective and objective knowledge tend to look like this.

However, in my paper I'll be maintaining that subjective knowledge does have value, though obviously not for the same reasons that objective knowledge does.  Here, with little explanation, are a couple of fuzzy images that came to mind as I worked out my reasons.

We begin with Plato's conception of knowledge.

Knowledge is the intersection between truth and beliefs (see Plato's Republic).

But what if there are different kinds of truths, so that not all truths can be accessed by one kind of knowledge?

If there are different kinds of truths, there must be different kinds of knowledge.  To discount one kind of knowledge would be discounting an entire area of truth (e.g. "Subjective knowledge is not valid, therefore the truth that subjective knowledge covers are not valid").

Here's another way to look at it.

Objective knowledge can be conceived as vertical line because it builds on top of itself, with the knowledge of one person forming the base for the knowledge of the next.

Subjective knowledge can be conceived as a horizontal line because must start anew with each individual.

Each by itself only exists in one dimension of the truth/world.  Only when the two lines are put in conjunction to enter the realm of the second dimension can the world begin to make sense and take on meaningful shape for us.

BIEBSES, BEST BIRTHDAY EVER HAVINGS IT WAS!

And this is a lot of what made it so.

Here is a special comic created for me by my doge, re-posted here with permission.

If this Emil/Baba thing confuses anyone, I...don't know that I have much of an explanation for you.  These two characters just hijacked a texting conversation my doge and I were having one day, and then... well, yes.

The first known image of Baba and Emil.

Thanks for the birthday thoughts, my doge!

Pictures of people!

That I drew!  I was trying out a new process for my very first job as a caricature artist (woohoo!), and these are what happened.  I used pencil (for layout), brush pen, and crayon.



My roommate has the coolest hair...



...but maybe not the coolest hat.



So dashing!  (Aww, yeah!)



So rugby?



These yellow cowslip cheeks...



And these guys also happened. Brush pen, crayon, and some goofing around on Photoshop.  With a mouse.




The unwitting model for the man is never that creepy-looking.